Robbie Williams Doc Director on Moving In With the Take That Star and Making Him Confront His Past: ‘How Can We Force Him to Re-Evaluate?’
variety.comK.J. Yossman The past 18 months have produced an abundance of celebrity documentaries, but Netflix’s newly-released “Robbie Williams” sets out to do something different.
Charting Williams’ rise from clueless teenager in British mega-boy band Take That to solo superstar, there’s no talking heads and no glossing over the less salubrious moments in Williams’ 35-year-career, including his relationships, drug-taking and depression.
Director Joe Pearlman, the filmmaker behind last year’s “Harry Potter” reunion and Netflix’s recent Lewis Capaldi documentary, set out to make a series about Williams confronting his extraordinary life head-on.
Eschewing traditional documentary formats, the four-part show sees Williams interviewed, mostly in bed, while watching archive footage stretching back three decades. “We did an initial interview and Rob gave a brilliant interview but it was an interview I’d heard before,” Pearlman says. “We were like, there’s so much more here.
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